


The Middle

by sammythemattressthief



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, OR IS IT, One Shot, her sweet kiss is a yennefer diss track
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23466079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sammythemattressthief/pseuds/sammythemattressthief
Summary: A couple of drunks beg Jaskier to sing them a song that he can't even get through in private without choking on, because he's still pining for Geralt nearly a year later. He's not proud of the way his voice cracks through it, but at least it lets the whole room know that he's actively still in pain. Makes it relatable, he thinks. Wait. Shit. Thewholeroom?Fuck.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 10
Kudos: 291





	The Middle

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this entire breakdown on Her Sweet Kiss not really being a yennefer diss track, and how it's actually a song all about Jaskier and how he's feeling about his relationship with geralt, and geralt's relationship with yen. [you can read it here.](https://sammythemattressthief.tumblr.com/post/190387690192/okay-so-how-many-of-you-are-tired-of-hearing-about)
> 
> and then this happened so just enjoy it i guess? or don't. but if you don't enjoy it, don't tell me. i am sensitive :v

Jaskier accepted the tankard of ale from the barmaid with a flourished bow and a saucy wink, his lips turned up in a quick smirk before he hid his mouth as he took a drink. Pleasantly cold, and he licked the foam from his lip and let his eyes drift across the room to find the rowdy group in the center of the room who had kept him up and playing long past his original set. The young lad at the eye of his friends attentions that evening wore a crown of woven reeds set with a few chips of red streaked stone and swayed drunkenly. According to their babbled stories, which Jaskier had to piece together from their bursts of chatter between their endless music requests, the crowned one had just been dumped by his lady love. She was a snake by all of their (somewhat biased) accounts, with a tongue like a dagger and a heart of ice and stone. 

They begged him to stay and sing for them, dropping coins into his bag that rested behind him, and after a roll of the eyes and a nod from the innkeeper, Jaskier had picked up his lute and continued to humour them. They shouted their inebriated joy to the rafters and smashed their tankards together. 

They reveled into the night, drinking and singing and dancing with one another. They acted out a rather dramatic scene, involving a burlish man donning a potato sack as long, feminine hair and pitching his voice high, begging his crowned friend to please take him back and forgive all “her” indiscretions. The crowned man loudly decried that he would no longer dally with the likes of such a heinous fiend, belched, and then leapt onto another friend’s back, who neighed like a horse and proceeded to stomp around the room. 

One of the less drunk lads, a younger man than Jaskier, approached the bar, barely wobbling and looking proud of it. 

“You ever been dumped, bard?” he asked, his words slightly slurred. Jaskier’s arm jerked, sloshing a bit of foam up to his nose. He lowered the tankard from his mouth, wiping at the foam with his thumb and sucking it into his mouth. 

_Cast away like a leper, more like._

“In a manner of speaking,” Jaskier mumbled, taking another large drink of ale. The young drunk nodded sagely, looking as forlorn as his friend had at the start of the evening. 

“It’s an awful thing, heartbreak,” he said sadly. “But it makes such moving tales! Poetry, novellas, songs...” he trailed off, then took a lurching step toward Jaskier, clutching at his shoulders. Jaskier lifted his drink out of the way, arching an eyebrow at the young man. “Have you any songs about it? Please, bard, share your pain with us!” Jaskier chuckled awkwardly, feeling his throat tighten.

“Oh, er, you don’t _really_ want to hear about my old war wounds. I’ve a much better song, you know, about a golden dragon -”

“Please, bard!” the man pleaded. He swept an arm out, gesturing to his friends, who were engaged in a chugging contest of sorts. “Shared pain is _less_ pain, surely you can see how Timothy thrives now?” 

_Well, he’s certainly not weeping from sorrow anymore_ , Jaskier thought, though it probably had more to do with the fact that he was blackout drunk and would probably wake up in a pig trough tomorrow morning, still sporting a broken heart and several lost hours.

“Give your pain to us and let us spread it amongst ourselves so that you may thrive as well!” the man implored. Jaskier didn’t know if he should be offended that he didn’t _look_ like he was thriving, but he sighed, looking into his tankard and wishing his ale had all the answers.

“If you insist,” he muttered. 

He was already quite tied up in his thoughts over this song when the man clapped his shoulders giddily and thundered off to his friends to inform them of his victory. This wasn’t a song he sang often, and for good reason. The magnum opus of his heartbreak and anger and resignation, he hadn’t been able to get through it even in private without his voice cracking. With a sigh, he turned to his lute, which sat propped against the fireplace. He picked it up and began to tune it, shutting down to the noises around him. The door opened, boots stomped about in a jig to music only drunks could hear, a barmaid laughed. 

He was physically standing in the inn, but as he rolled over the lyrics and chords in his mind, he was on a dusty mountain top, listening to the man he loved as he argued with _his_ love, fuming quietly as she hurled sharp words at him, aching as each barb cut into Geralt as surely as any dagger. And then Geralt was rounding on him, shunting him out of his life and breaking him into pieces. He made his lonely way down the mountainside, biting a hole through the inside of his lip so that he wouldn’t scream. It was so out of character for him to simply accept something so hurtful, but where Yennefer was concerned... he simply lost all reason and the ability to think logically flew from him on swift wings. She enraged him, habitually wounded Geralt, and made him say foolish, ridiculous things like suggesting that he and Geralt escape to the fucking _coast_. Together! Jaskier snorted. As if he could have ever convinced Geralt of _that_. 

He turned to face the group of men and strummed his lute. Their chatter dulled as he plucked the first notes, though it didn’t die completely. The man that had approached him from before and the crowned man focused on him, though, and he swallowed his pride and his nerves and the sudden excess of saliva and began to sing.

“ _The fairer sex, they often call it. But her love’s as unfair as a crook,”_ he begun, his lip curling up in distaste. Every time he sung this song, it started the same - full of frustration and anger. This song was the only outlet he’d given himself in the wake of Geralt’s departure from his life. This was his only mourning, his only fury. 

“ _She’s always bad news, it’s always lose, lose. So tell me love, tell me love, how is that just?”_ he sung. A noise by the bar nearly distracted him, a harsh scrape of a chair against the floor, but the transition into the chorus required his attention on the strings. The gaggle of drunken revelers had shuffled closer to him, more of them paying rapt attention as he sung, attempting to hum along to a song they’d never heard before. 

The second verse was the hardest, no matter how many times he practiced it. Which was, naturally, very infrequently, because the pain it caused simply wasn’t worth the private practice. 

“ _I’m weak, my love, and I am wanting.”_ His voice cracked so predictably, his brow furrowing both with his frustration at his own weakness and the way his chest clenched. Why couldn’t he have written a ballad about the Countess de Stael? He could have faked that well enough. “ _If this is the path I must trudge, I’ll welcome my sentence, give to you my penance, garroter, jury, and judge_.” 

His small crowd of drunks gasped, clutching at one another and trying to repress quibbling lips. He did his best to flash them a reassuring smile.

“ _But the story is this, she’ll destroy with her sweet kiss_ ,” he finished, strumming once more on the strings of his lute and bowing lowly. The group applauded him, and the man in the crown wiped at his eyes shamelessly. He and the man from before approached him, wearing wobbly smiles.

“Brilliant, bard, tragically beautiful!” the man in the crown complimented. “Truly, that woman must have broken your heart as surely as my lady love has done my own.” Jaskier chuckled awkwardly, then coughed a little. 

“Er, yes, I suppose she did,” he murmured, forcing his lips upward in a farce of a smile. It wasn’t _entirely_ a lie, though the truth was far more complex than he’d ever divulge to another living soul for the remainder of his pathetic, lonely years.

“It’s like you were telling her off and simply wrote down everything right in the moment!” the man without the crown said. “What a talent, bard!” He clapped a hand on Jaskier’s shoulder. “Your pain is ours as well tonight!” Jaskier offered a tight smile and bobbed his head a little, not trusting his voice to say anything more. 

“How long has it been?” the man in the crown asked, sotto voce. “Does it get any easier?” Jaskier cleared his throat.

“Oh, er, nearly a year,” he said, his voice dropping with emotion. “And I honestly can’t say that it does. I -”

“Jaskier.”

He whipped his head around and nearly fell backwards into a support beam when he locked eyes with Geralt, standing by the bar with a white knuckled grip on a tankard of ale. He felt himself sway on his feet, and the sticky hands of the men caught him, patting him and asking rather loudly if he was all right. _No,_ he wasn’t all right, of course he wasn’t. Geralt was in the tavern, had been for more than the scant minute and a half since his song ended, which meant that he’d _heard_ Jaskier’s song. He’d heard him pour his heartbreak and anger out into the only relief he’d ever had, heard him trash talk his fucking girlfriend set to _music_. 

Gods above, he wanted so badly to die. 

Well, maybe not die, but he certainly wouldn’t have minded if some horrible beast were to wander in and tear the roof off the inn and distract the witcher long enough for Jaskier to nick a horse from the stables and book it out of there as fast as he could. No, he wouldn’t have minded that at all. It’d be severely preferable to the look Geralt was fixing him with. 

And it was certainly better than Geralt walking toward him, which is what he was currently doing. 

Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. Jaskier felt a high pitched whine vibrate in the back of his throat, and he spun around, gripping the neck of his lute as if it would sprout wings and lift him away from such a horrible situation. He took two steps, that was all the further he made it before he felt a touch at his elbow. He froze immediately, knowing his eyes were impossibly wide, feeling his pulse racing through his body. He swallowed, hoping it was not painfully audible, and took a slow, careful breath, making sure that his shoulders didn’t heave with the effort. He loosened the grip on his lute so quickly that he nearly dropped it, and then spun around to greet Geralt, a smile plastered onto his face. 

“Geralt! What a surprise to see you here. How long’s it been? Two years, three? Ten?” he babbled, his voice high and reedy. 

“Nearly a year,” Geralt said quietly. Jaskier snapped his mouth shut as his words from just a moment ago were echoed back to him. He blinked up at Geralt, his pulse quickening further as he took him in. His face was much the same - no new scars, no new lines of age. Strong jaw, dirt smudged across one cheek, a day’s worth of beard growth dusted across his face. His brow was furrowed slightly, and his eyes were carefully guarded. Jaskier felt his throat go dry and he laughed nervously.

“Goodness, that’s all? I mean, I’ve just been _all over_ and time’s slipped away, of course,” he said, waving a hand through the air dismissively. “Lots of travel these days, work’s been easy to find, as are the women, and the stories follow soon after, you know how it goes,” he babbled. “People tell me all sorts of things in taverns, just the most wonderful and sad stories, so often, really.” He shouldered around Geralt and waved for another flagon of ale and hoped the desperation in his eyes was enough for the barmaid to sympathetically beat his skull in with a skillet or something. 

“Jaskier,” Geralt rumbled, his voice softer than the bard had ever heard it. It made his chest _ache_ , and he had to bite the inside of his lip to stop himself from whimpering or moaning or sobbing aloud. 

“And I’ve written such delightful songs from their stories, let me tell you!” Jaskier exclaimed loudly, slapping a palm down on the counter, then he exhaled dramatically. “They’re quite popular for requests, too, it’s really something!” He downed half the ale the barmaid set in front of him in three large gulps, swiping at his mouth with the back of his hand and hoping he wasn’t shaking as bad as he felt he was. When he braved a glance up at Geralt’s face again, the corner of the witcher’s lips were quirked up in a small smile, and Jaskier had to tamp down on a swell of anger. How dare he waltz in and approach him as if he hadn’t screamed in his face when last they met? 

“I’ve missed you,” Geralt said, the rich timbre of his voice shooting through Jaskier and pinning him in place.

But only for a moment.

“ _You_ miss _me?”_ Jaskier demanded, gaping like a fish for a moment before snapping his jaw shut. “You don’t get to miss _me_ , Geralt of Rivia!” Jaskier poked him hard in the chest, and Geralt raised one eyebrow. “You should be missing _Yennefer_ of _Vengerberg_ ,” he hissed, “not the tag-along bard you never wanted in your life to begin with.” He crossed his arms, narrowing his eyes and scanning the room. “Where is that harpy, anyway?”

“If you hadn’t been in my life, I’d have never met Yennefer,” Geralt said, sounding grossly reasonable. Jaskier rolled his eyes. 

“Oh, you should be _thanking_ me, then! You’re _welcome_ ,” he snapped, stepping back and sweeping low in a mocking bow. “So glad to have helped you find your true love.” Jaskier sighed in frustration, sweeping his hair back and shaking his head. He turned back to the bar, grabbing up his ale. “Please, leave me to my drink. I’ll be gone in the morning and you can do whatever work you need to in town, uninhibited.”

“I’m here for you,” Geralt said simply, as if it were the easiest thing in the world to say. Jaskier side-eyed him with a scowl, his anger and his heartbreak warring with one another.

“Geralt, I’m trying to honour your request by staying out of your life. You’re making it rather difficult,” he said softly. “Please, just go.”

Frowning, Geralt stepped up to him, invading his space and his senses like a great, big, white-haired plague. 

“If I hadn’t met Yennefer -”

“Then you’d have never known true happiness, yes, delightful, good for you, many happy years,” Jaskier bit out, flapping a hand at him. Geralt caught his hand in both of his own, rough callouses rasping against the soft skin on the back of Jaskier’s hand. 

“- then I would not have realised how good I had it all those years before her,” Geralt finished gently, his yellow eyes boring a hole into the side of Jaskier’s head until he whipped around to meet his gaze. 

“You _what_?” Jaskier hissed, his blue eyes as wide as dinner plates and he eyebrows disappearing into his hairline. He wanted to pull his hand out of Geralt’s grip, yank it back and clutch it to his chest, but he found himself frozen, unable to move. Calloused thumbs stroked over the back of his hand in a gesture so tender it made him want to cry, and he bit the inside of his lip again to fight it.

“I was wrong to send you away, Jaskier,” Geralt said, his voice and features soft. “You should be at my side.”

_What_.

Jaskier wanted to choke, and he thought he might for how difficult it was to draw breath into his lungs. He could feel one of his eyebrows twitching, and he suddenly really want to punch his stupid witcher right in the jaw.

“Found yourself in situations you couldn’t talk your way out of? Need a maiden distracted?” he sneered. Instead of responding to Jaskier’s anger, Geralt simply tugged him forward by the grip he still had on his hands, forcing the bard to take a step right up into Geralt’s space. One of Geralt’s hands settled on his hip, and Jaskier barely bit back a gasp. 

“I found myself thinking of little else but you,” Geralt rumbled. “I made a mistake, and I know better now.”

Just as quickly as his hand had made its way to his hip, it was suddenly cradling his face, tilting his jaw up and holding it in place for Geralt to lower his mouth to slant across Jaskier’s. It was all so fluid and smooth and quick that Jaskier didn’t have any time to react; Geralt’s eyes were closed and he moved his lips against Jaskier’s in a manner so imploring and tender that Jaskier responded immediately.

He was still furious, of course, but a good kiss was a good kiss, all right? And this was a damn good kiss. He willed his knees not to buckle and brought a hand up to fist in Geralt’s ragged looking black shirt. He kissed back, his anger sharpening the kiss to something more angled and harsh than what Geralt was making it. He nipped at Geralt’s lip before he pulled back, breathless, to glare at him. 

“You can’t just wander up to me a year after you shouted me off a mountain and kiss me like that!” he snapped, waving his free hand through the air. He gave him a little shove with the hand on his chest, though Geralt, immovable tree that he is, barely shifted. “I’ve done what you said you wanted, I’ve stayed very well out of your life and I’d like it if you paid me the same courtesy.”

“I was wrong,” Geralt said. He slid his hand up Jaskier’s arm to cup his forearm and stepped close to him again. “I should not have made you leave. The silence of your absence deafens, and my own thoughts aren’t nearly so kind as you are.” His hand trailed down Jaskier’s arm and fell to his waist; Geralt’s hand was so large that Jaskier thought it would completely eclipse the side of his body. The heat he felt certainly lent credence to this wild thought. “I would make it up to you, if you’ll have me.”

Jaskier’s lips fell open, surprise and confusion warring on his face. Geralt was being outlandishly, uncharacteristically sincere and nearly _sweet_. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say the witcher was under some demon’s spell. And Jaskier... 

Well, he was weak and wanting, after all.

“And what brought this change on, hm? Yennefer turn you out after you whispered my name in her ear?” he asked. It was a nasty barb, but he couldn’t bring himself to feel too terrible for it. 

“A book or two helped me to realize that you are... much more important to me than I had previously led you to believe,” Geralt said, sounding quiet and uncharacteristically muted, but not embarrassed. Jaskier didn’t think his eyes could get any wider if he forcibly peeled his lids back. 

“If you think you can swan back into my life and kiss me every time you fuck up, you’re sorely mistaken, Geralt of Rivia,” he said after a long moment, brow furrowing as he poked him hard in the chest. Geralt’s voice rumbled over him in a warm chuckle that shot straight through’s Jaskier’s core and made his toes curl in happiness. 

He could be happy and angry at the same time, right? 

“Name the price of your forgiveness and it’s yours,” Geralt murmured, stepping impossibly closer, hands skirting down his arms. Jaskier crossed his arms, narrowing his eyes and scowling at a point across the bar.

“The kissing is a good place to start,” he mumbled. 

He’d barely finished speaking when Geralt’s hands were wrapping around his waist -- and had his hands always been that huge, or was Jaskier’s waist just.. no, of course not, he had a perfectly normal sized waist, thank you very much -- and Geralt’s hot mouth was covering his again. This time, Jaskier kissed him back properly, his hands flying to bury themselves in Geralt’s hair as he pressed himself as close to the other man as he dared get in a public tavern. His feet shuffled him forward and he lifted up onto his toes to take a bit more control of the kiss. Geralt let him, smiling indulgently as his fingers clenched on his waist. 

Jaskier was overwhelmed with the desire to climb Geralt like a tree, to wrap his legs about his waist and be carried off into the sunset like a maiden fair. The smell of sweat and the road and horse filled his senses, but he wasn’t turned off in the slightest. He found, instead, that he missed it, _craved_ it. 

And yet, after everything, it wasn’t enough.

He pulled back, and Geralt chased his plush bottom lip to kiss it once more before Jaskier found his voice again and shot him a coy look.

“It needs a proper middle and ending though, of course,” he said suggestively. 

Geralt’s gaze darkened, and there it was - that heat he’d seen when he’d catch the witcher staring at Yennefer. Only now, it was directed at _him_. Jaskier suppressed a shudder.

Well, maybe he wouldn’t expedite the ending. Maybe he’d just live here, in the middle of it all, with Geralt. 


End file.
